NHS. Not Safe with the Tories

When we speak or write about the NHS "not being safe in the hands of the Tories", I think we need to be a little more precise.

I suspect it won't be that the NHS will be 'on the table' in future trade deals. The Tories, if they win, will talk about the Service continuing to be free at the point of use, and 'regulated' by the Government as a state service, paid for by general taxation. (In fact some Tory candidates have already started to use this language).

The challenge is that, by allowing some or most of the services used by the NHS to be supplied as part of international trade deals, by private companies, the cost of the Service will sky rocket.

This is why Labour are focusing on pharmaceutical costs at the moment. The UK currently bargains hard to keep medicine costs down for us all, and the EU are also part of that. The US want to be able to charge an awful lot more for the drugs their companies provide, which is why they want them on the table in future trade discussions.

Other services supporting the NHS have already been contracted to the private sector, in some areas, with very mixed results. And a number have been brought back into the service as a result. But in the context of Brexit, and a right-wing Tory Government dead-set on achieving 'deals no matter what,' the number of these are likely to increase dramatically.

These increased costs could be exceptionally damaging for the NHS. They would dwarf the rather pitiful budget increases that the Tories are currently proposing. The ability of the service to respond to the needs of the population would drop dramatically.

The result would be more money being required for the NHS, which would mostly go to fund private sector profits. Or, with no further increase in budgets, a hollowed-out shell of a service not fit for purpose is likely to result, I think. And this in turn would enable a subsequent increase of private provision to be promoted to 'help' the NHS.

Through all this, the Government would claim it was still a National, state-funded service, free at the point of need. But it would be crippled by their policies, and far less able to deliver the care that we all want and need.